Got up at O-dark-thirty to take the GF to the airport so she could fly home and see her family. Long flight, PST to EST, and she has to catch a bus on the back end. It was tight for the bus she wanted but if they got away on time she'd make it instead of waiting two hours for the next one, the last of the day.

Twenty minutes before scheduled departure, everything fine. Just after that UAL changes it from 8:25 to 8:45. She shoots me an email to update me and notes they told the passengers that "the FAA wouldn't let the previous flight leave their gate" so that their aircraft couldn't get in.

It updated a couple of more times with delays and finally departed at 10:42, and it's likely she will miss the last bus of the day and end up having to find a hotel for the night.

I used to like United until I moved to the bay area. They screw up their gates and schedules at SFO like nobody's business; I think I've been on time twice with them out of here in the last decade. Every other airline I've taken (Delta, American, Frontier, Jet Blue, Virgin, Southwest, America West, US Air have been much better, perhaps four delays of more than ten minutes).

This is the primary reason I won't fly United anymore. They seem to be more like a Three Stooges skit than a real business.

^^^United breaks guitars too! Recall this??

United Breaks Guitars - YouTube

They should front her taxicab fare to a hotel and one night's hotel lodging at the destination at least.

Please email her and tell her to ask for that.

I despise SFO, the TSA "security" there sucks goats. It has made me miss a flight at least once or twice, stranding me for hours..

__________________
1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

IF THE FAA was responsible that has nothing to so with UAL

__________________
Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Dammit, I am not here to argue with people about causation and correlation, this is about UAL doing the RIGHT THING!

__________________
1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

This is typical of UAL, at least at SFO. They screw up gate assignments and blame the tower.

It's sort of like telling your boss you're late to work because the kids missed the school bus and you had to drive them to work...but the reality is they missed the bus because you didn't have their lunches ready because you overslept.

A couple months back, I missed a UAL flight at SFO. The United Express terminal is at one end, while their larger planes fly out of another terminal and it's impossible to get to the other terminal, go through TSA and then get to Gate 90 in 45 minutes during their morning crunch.

United has over 5,000 flights per day. Rather than obtain some data that shows that UAL is significantly worse than any other carrier, you decide to draw a conclusion based upon a single flight. One of 5,000.

Be interesting to see how you do with some of Fox News material.............

And you know this how?

Gates are typical assigned by dispatch. If there are ground holds due to weather or other delays in the system then timing gets screwed up and gates have to be juggled. I worked the system for 25 years. It is not always the airlines fault.

__________________
Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

United Airlines had the highest rate of consumer complaints in 2011, beating out all other airlines with 2.21 complaints per 100,000 passengers. As a result, United received the worst AQR score out of the 11 national carriers ranked. Headley suspects that the company's $3 billion merger with Continental Airlines is to blame. "Anytime you have two airlines trying to combine, one of those airlines is going to have a period of decline," he explains. United also experienced a drop in its percentage of on-time arrivals, and the number of lost or damaged bags increased from 3.4 per 1,000 passengers to 3.66.


United At Bottom of Customer Ratings

It is very rarely the fault solely of the airline. When it is the fault of the airline, there is an equipment failure.

Of course, any customer surely cannot accept the fact that a piece of machinery failed at the precise moment when he NEEDS it to meet a schedule.

There you go...........now you've got some data to support "UAL sucks"..........but, it's incremental.

Safety of flight issue I bet, then UAL would be responsible.

Your combative, know-it-all attitude is really tiresome.

And while I don't watch BS network news, I'd prefer it to your pointed, opinionated drivel.

In the last six months the flight she was on has landed an average of almost thirty minutes late.

You also conveniently did not quote the party of my comment discussing my personal history of flights on United out of SFO. I admit it's also a small sample, but first, it's not replicated by my experience with other carriers on similar flights, and if United screws up that much in my personal small sample it's likely others have similar experiences. (And given the study otherwise posted, it appears my life is not lived in a vacuum.)


Be interesting to see how you do arguing with yourself. Doubtless you'd assure us you won.

Old(ish) but good:
United Breaks Guitars - YouTube ("United Breaks Guitars")

PS - security at SFO is actually privatized, so you can't totally blame the TSA for any screwups there.